


Pitch Black

by FairyLights101



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Depression, Dissociation, Gender Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Character, Trans Semi Eita
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 09:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10873719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyLights101/pseuds/FairyLights101
Summary: “Why can’t they see?” he croaked.“See what?” Akaashi murmured, the fingers on his back, in his hair stilling.





	Pitch Black

Semi wrapped his arms around himself, shrinking in as he sagged against the wall. He could feel a chill biting at him, but nothing else. Just an empty ache that lingered, digging in, leaving him numb as he stared forward, blank.  _ Still too much.  _

A tongue passed over chapped lips. Amber eyes fluttered. He couldn’t quite feel, wasn’t sure if he was connected. Couldn’t even see. Just ground beneath him, wood stained with evening light. The blinds were open. Water was running. A blink. A breath whispered in. Fingers curled in tighter. Pain prickled through, drifting in and out of the haze. Head lolled to the side. Thumped against the wall. Jaw worked, tongue sliding along teeth. _ What a fucking freak.  _ A weak laugh bubbled out. A shiver worked through his body - was it his? Someone else’s?  _ Her’s?  _ He wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure, could barely even think. 

Something shifted. 

Black. 

Gray. 

Fingers brushed across skin, found hair. Soft words curled through unhearing ears, trailed across a blank mind, seeking him out from  _ wherever _ he was, huddled up, barely able to breathe. Another blink. Long eyelashes and terrified gray eyes. Dark curls. Semi reached up, trembling fingers brushing across Akaashi’s cheek, settling loosely in his hair, barely holding. Warm fingers curled around his wrist. Grounded him. 

_ That’s real. Akaashi is real. His touch is real. His warmth is real.  _

That familiar heat enveloped that uncooperative body, arms circling around, settling against a sharp hipbone. “I’m here,” Akaashi whispered. Semi couldn’t find his voice, couldn’t find whatever it was to allow him to even give a weak nod. A hand pressed his face into a shoulder. Fingers rose, caught in a soft shirt, and Semi shivered. Sucked down a breath. Closed his eyes as he let Akaashi pull him in, sinking into the warmth. 

Things came back slowly. 

Feeling in his toes first, twitching and cold despite his socks. Then his scalp with the way Akaashi’s fingers trailed through his hair, pulling him back, grounding him with every gentle scratch against skin or tug on hair. His throat, the ache that lay in there, waiting, creeping in on him like some damnable beast he couldn’t escape. Just like so much else. Like the ever-present disgust, the need to claw his skin off, shed everything he could and huddle in a corner, shivering and heaving. 

Semi sucked down a breath, more reminiscent of a fish out of water, and tugged harder at Akaashi’s shirt. “Why can’t they see?” he croaked. 

“See what?” Akaashi murmured, the fingers on his back, in his hair stilling. 

Semi pried himself away, burning eyes focusing on Akaashi as he shook his partner’s collar, desperate.  _ “Why can’t they see me?”  _ See him as a boy. See him as  _ Eita.  _ See him as who he was, who he felt like, not some fucking façade. He snatched himself away and rose, Akaashi scrambling up behind him, but Semi stalked off to the other side of the room, tearing at his hair, shoulders caving in as tears scorched paths down his cheeks. He whirled around, hands flying out. “They can’t see! I can’t fucking tell them! I’m just fucking  _ stupid,  _ a fucking  _ freak,  _ and I wish I’d never been fucking born! Everything would be so much fucking easier if I wasn’t like this, if I could’ve just been little  _ Eiko  _ for them, not  _ Eita.  _ If I could’ve been  _ her.  _ Maybe then they’d fucking love me, maybe then they’d-” 

He broke off, choking on a keen that threatened to bubble up in his throat, but when Akaashi tried to come forward, tried to touch him, he twisted away, shifted further, back pressed to his bed as his hands clawed at his face, eyes caught somewhere between seeing and not. The tightness in his chest was back, grating, and he shook his head, heat pulsing through his body. “It doesn’t fucking matter…” he wheezed, gasping his way through words. “It never has. So what if a few people call me Eita, call me  _ he,  _ that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got this  _ shit,  _ that every time I go somewhere new it’s  _ ‘Hi, Semi Eiko, right?’  _ or  _ ‘Wow, you’re such a pretty girl!’  _ and  _ ‘she’  _ this and  _ ‘her’  _ that and it doesn’t matter if I bind every day or-” 

Semi slapped his thigh, the sting barely registering as he glared at Akaashi, trembling. His jaw worked. Words were on the tip of his tongue, throat raw from the panic attacks, from the shouting, from the sobbing that had been happening  _ all day.  _ He smiled weakly, fingers twitching by his sides, shoulders sagging as he shook his head, fixed his eyes on the floor. 

“I don’t  _ want _ this, Keiji. I just want to fucking  _ die. _ ” 

Because maybe then it would stop. The endless torture of his body betraying him for simply existing, shredding him every time he had to wrestle his way into a binder, every time he started bleeding out of his stupid  _ vagina,  _ every fucking time he looked in the mirror and saw a thousand imperfections: face too soft and round, shoulders not broad enough, too curvy, disgusting breasts too big, too noticeable, too  _ apparent.  _ Or the anxiety that ripped him to pieces, clawed through him and snatched his voice away, left his chest so agonizingly tight that he thought he’d die, that left him barely coherent as he drifted through life. 

There was too much that gave him away - his breasts, his curves, his gait, his fucking  _ voice.  _ The inability to correct people about his pronouns, that  _ she _ was a  _ he, thank you very fucking much,  _ because there was too much shit to that, too much to unravel, too much crippling anxiety, too much fear. Or, at the very least, it would surely stop the memories. The ones that had sunk into him with razor fangs. 

_ “Where did we go wrong?”  _

_ “What should we have done differently?”  _

_ “I won’t call you Eita. You’re Eiko. You’re always my sweet baby girl, my precious Eiko.”  _

Hands brushed across his and he jerked his head away, eyes clamped shut.  _ I can’t look at him. I can’t fucking look at him.  _ Because he knew Akaashi was  _ hurt,  _ knew that there was no way a confession like that would save whatever they had.  _ This is fucked. It was fucked from the beginning. He’s dating a freak like me, a fucking failure. Someone who should’ve just fucking died years ago, who-  _

“Eita.” Whisper-soft, a lull against his mind that made his shuddery breaths still, hands faltering in their attempts to tug away. “Eita,” Akaashi whispered again, fingers tracing a trail up his scarred arms, along his neck to cup his cheeks as he shivered beneath the touches. “Eita,” once more, still hushed, and he shuddered, chest clenching as he sagged forward, into those soft hands. “You’re not a freak. You’re not what you’ve torn yourself down to, what they’ve broken you into.” 

Thumbs worked slow paths along his cheeks, traced bones that lay beneath fragile skin. Semi’s eyes fluttered open. Flicked over. Akaashi’s were brimming with tears, but he was still smiling, beautiful and soft, and it stretched a little wider as Semi looked to him. “You’re my handsome man, Semi Eita, and nothing can take that away. No amount of scars, no amount of self-hate - nothing. There is more to you than you think.” 

He swallowed hard, shook his head, but he couldn’t find words, only a weak whimper that made Akaashi smile weakly, even as he sniffled quietly. “I love you, Semi Eita. Nothing is going to change that.” 

Semi managed a smile, fragile, filled with splinters and cracks. “I know.”  _ It’s just hard to remember.  _

Difficult on the best of days, when everything was only a dull tickle in the back of his mind. Impossible, unthinkable on the worst, when he could barely leave the bed, when he couldn’t even find the energy to move, when he bit his tongue so he wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t give himself away. But, always, it was there, lingering in the corners, seeking a way in, gently reminding him that it was okay, that things would get better. 

Just like the doubts. 

Akaashi squeezed him tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> This was intended to be a vent piece to get shit.  
> Leave a comment and hit me up at [tumblr](http://fairylights101.tumblr.com/)


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